Stochastic flow shop scheduling model for the Panama Canal

Reducing transit time is becoming increasingly important in maritime shipping of manufactured goods and commodities. Traversing the Panama Canal is a principal component of many global companies’ strategies to reduce shipping time in their supply chain. Operations in the Panama Canal can be described by a capacitated queueing network. In this study we used a metaheuristic approach based on Nested Partitions to find near optimal schedules for daily vessel traffic consisting of large vessels that want to pass through the Panama Canal. Results indicate that the metaheuristic technique consistently reduced the makespan of a set of vessels as compared to historical schedules used in canal operations. We also found distinct patterns in the schedules in which certain vessels consistently appeared at a certain position in the schedule.